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Too little spring: overall
• Car contacts the track a lot
• Floating ride with excess vertical chassis movement, pitch and roll
• Sloppy and inconsistent response
• Car slow to take a set – may take more than one

Relatively too little spring: rear
• Excessive squat on acceleration accompanied by excessive rear negative camber, leading to oversteer and poor power down characteristics
• Tendency to fall over on outside rear tyre and ‘flop’ into oversteer and wheel-spin
ANTI-ROLL BARS

Too much anti-roll bar: overall
• Car will be very sudden in response and will have little feel
• Car will tend to slide or skate rather than taking a set – especially in slow and medium speed corners
• Car may dart over one wheel or diagonal bumps

Relatively too much anti-roll bar: rear
• If the imbalance is extreme can cause corner entry oversteer
• Corner exit oversteer. Car won’t put down power but goes directly to oversteer due to inside wheel-spin
• Excessive sliding on corner exit
• Car has a violent reaction to major bumps and may be upset by ‘FIA’ kerbs

Relatively too little anti-roll: rear
• My own opinion is that on most road courses a rear anti-roll bar is a bad thing. Anti-roll bars transfer lateral load from the unladen tyre to the laden tyre – exactly what we don’t want at the rear. I would much rather use enough spring to support the rear of the car. The exception comes when there are ‘washboard ripples’ at corner exits, as on street circuits and poorly paved road circuits.
SHOCK ABSORBER FORCES

Too much shock: overall
• A very sudden car with harsh ride qualities, much sliding and wheel patter
• Car will not absorb road surface irregularities but crashes over them

Too much rebound force
• Wheels do not return quickly to road surface after displacement. Inside wheel in a corner may be pulled off the road by the damper while still loaded
• Car may ‘jack down’ over bumps or in long corners causing a loss of tyre compliance. Car does not power down well at exit of corners when road surface is not extremely smooth

Too little high piston speed bump force
• Suspension may bottom over the largest bumps on the track resulting in momentary loss of tyre contact and excessive instantaneous loads on suspension and chassis

Dead shock on one corner
• A dead shock is surprisingly difficult for a driver to identify and/or isolate
• At the rear, that car will ‘fall over’ onto the outside tyre and oversteer in one direction only
• At the front, the car will ‘fall over’ onto the outside tyre on corner entry and then understeer.

WHEEL ALIGNMENT

Front toe-in: too much
• Car darts over bumps, under heavy braking and during corner entry – is generally unstable
• Car won’t point into corners, or if extreme. May point in very quickly and then dart and wash out

Front toe-out: too much
• Car wanders under heavy braking and may be somewhat unstable in a straight line, especially in response to single wheel or diagonal bumps and/or wind gusts
• Car may point into corners and then refuse to take a set
• If extreme will cause understeer tyre drag in long corners

Front wheel caster or trail: too much
• Excessive physical steering effort accompanied by too much self return action and transmittal of road shocks to the drivers hands
• General lack of sensitivity to steering input due to excessive force required

Front wheel caster or trail: uneven
• Steering effort is harder in one direction than in the other
• Car will ‘pull’ towards the side with less caster – good on ovals, bad on road courses

Camber: too much negative
• Inside of tyre excessively hot and/or wearing too rapidly. At the front this will show up as reduced braking capability and at the rear as reduced acceleration capability. Depending on the racetrack and the characteristics of the individual tyre, inside temperature should be 10°-25° hotter than the outside. Use a real pyrometer with a needle rather than an infra red surface temperature device.

Camber: not enough negative
• Outside of tyre will be hot and wearing. This should never be and is almost always caused by running static positive camber at the rear in an effort to avoid the generation of excessive negative camber under the influence of aero download at high speed.
• A better solution is improved geometry and increased spring rate. Dynamic positive camber will always degrade rear tyre performance and if extreme, can cause braking instability and/or corner exit oversteer.

Rear tyres ‘going off’
• Gradually increasing power on oversteer – Try to carry more speed through corner and be later and more gradual with power application
LIMITED SLIP MALADIES

Limited slip differential wearing out
• Initial symptoms are decreased power on understeer or increased power on oversteer and inside wheel spin. The car might be easier to drive, but it will be slow
• When wear becomes extreme, stability under hard acceleration from low speed will diminish and things will not be pleasant at all

Corner exit understeer: slow corners
 Often a function of excessive corner entry and mid-phase understeer (whether driver induced or car induced) followed by throttle application whilst maintaining the understeer steering lock. The first step must be to cure the corner entry and mid-phase understeer. If this is impractical, then corner entry speed should be reduced slightly in order to allow earlier throttle application. Sometimes we have to be patient.

Car does not put the power down on the exit of bumpy corners
 Any or all of the above for smooth corners
 Excessive rear damper high piston speed force
 Excessive rear damper rebound force (jacking down)
 Insufficient rear droop travel

TRANSITIONS

Understeer in, snap to oversteer on power application
 The most common complaint of all ! Usually caused by too little roll resistance  car falls over on entry and then snaps.
 Increase front bar and/or spring and/or front damper low piston speed bump force. Stiffening the bar will also transfer some load on to the inside rear tyre on acceleration.
 If the suggestion above cures the understeer but the car still snaps, the culprit is almost always the car falling over on the outside rear tyre on longitudinal plus lateral load transfer. Add rear bar or spring. Bar will transfer load away from the inside rear tyre. Spring will not. Spring will, however, decrease traction over exit bumps while bar will not.
 Loose anti-roll bar linkage/blade sockets can have the exactly same effect

Jsut noticed the sae released a compilation he was working on when he passed away, photocopies of 15 sae papers on chassis and suspension design. $100 just for that! They're acting like it's a 'tribute' to him. Wankers...

I can only add a 'me too' for the recommendations on his tune to win, engineer to win, drive to win and screw to win (which is possibly 'actually' listed as the book on fasteners )

Drive to win is probably the most amusing (though the humour is likely subtle and mild for most people's tastes, I liked it) and for 95% of us if we were only allowed one of his books, tune to win would be the one. there's absolutely bugger all in it that is 'dated'. Perhaps a little about tyre and shock absorbers, but it's very obvious as to where things have headed, and how to still be able to optimally apply everything he discusses in a modern context. Absolutely brilliant.

John McKenzie

Science flies people to the moon.
Religion flies people into buildings.

Jsut noticed the sae released a compilation he was working on when he passed away, photocopies of 15 sae papers on chassis and suspension design. $100 just for that! They're acting like it's a 'tribute' to him. Wankers...